1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a technique for controlling usage of a shared service, such a mobile telephone service being provided to a group of subscribers or group of accounts in real time.
2. Description of the Related Art
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Service providers, for example, a service provider for mobile telephone communication, may provide plans or packages that include a service for more than one user so that the users share an account or more than one account established by the plan. The accounts may include a sum of minutes shared by the users during use of their phones. However, the service provider incurs risk when providing the service to accounts and subscribers of accounts without pre-payment such as possible losses due to non-payment. This risk increases with each additional user and account due to the increase in usage of the service. Moreover, users may desire service providers limit use of the service in order to decrease cost. Accordingly, service providers have a necessity for control.
The present document discloses a technique for controlling usage of a service by more than one subscriber or account.